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Meta’s $18 Billion Teen Safety Settlement: Soft Guardrails, Hard Leverage Over TikTok and YouTube

Silicon Scoop · Episode 556 · October 16, 2026

Deep dive on Meta teen safety settlement, social media addiction lawsuit, new Facebook Instagram time limits and pressure on TikTok YouTube age verification.

With Craig Major and Jon Irwin

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Meta’s $18 Billion Teen Safety Settlement: Soft Guardrails, Hard Leverage Over TikTok and YouTube

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Meta's Teen Safety Settlement Just Cost Less Than You Think

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Key Takeaways

  • Meta's teen safety settlement made history on August 27, 2026.
  • The annual bill Meta will pay works out to less than 2% of what the company made in profit last year.
  • Phase II only activates under a condition the settlement calls "Industry-Wide Adoption."
  • By structuring roughly 30% of the total payment as contingent on Industry-Wide Adoption, Meta has effectively turned its own legal liability into a weapon aimed at TikTok, YouTube, and Snap.
  • Even supporters of stronger teen protections are raising alarms about one critical piece of the settlement's foundation: the age verification and age assurance technology it depends on.

Table of contents

Meta's teen safety settlement made history on August 27, 2026. The largest payment a Big Tech company has ever made to U.S. states. Eighteen billion dollars spread across a decade. On the surface, it sounds like a serious reckoning for a company that built platforms accused of deliberately hooking children.

But look closer at the math, the fine print, and the strategic moves baked into the agreement, and a different picture comes into focus.

The trial lasted just eight days. CEO Mark Zuckerberg never took the stand. And the annual bill Meta will pay works out to less than 2% of what the company made in profit last year. Four states had been seeking roughly $200 billion. They walked away with a fraction of that.

This piece breaks down exactly what the settlement requires, what it leaves untouched, why it may hurt TikTok and YouTube more than Meta, and what critics say is still missing.

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The Social Media Addiction Lawsuit That Shook Big Tech

The legal case behind this settlement did not appear overnight. The underlying litigation — MDL No. 3047, In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, consolidated before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California — pulled together claims from dozens of states and thousands of individual plaintiffs.

The core argument was straightforward: Facebook and Instagram were engineered, not just designed, to maximize the time teenagers spent on the platforms, in ways that caused measurable psychological harm. Features like infinite scroll, variable reward notifications, and engagement-optimized content feeds were cited as deliberate mechanisms that exploited developing brains.

The case also folded in older complaints. A separate Cambridge Analytica settlement amount of $459,293,017.80 was embedded within the overall agreement, resolving claims tied to the 2018 data scandal that had already cost Meta billions in FTC fines. California AG Settlement Document

Forty-eight states and territories joined the settlement. Florida was the notable holdout. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier called the deal an insult, arguing that "corporations like Meta will never learn a lesson if they don't incur real costs for breaking the law." His office intends to continue litigating. CNN

The settlement also explicitly references the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), 15 U.S.C. § 6501 et seq., and incorporates ISO 27566 or equivalent age-assurance standards into its testing and certification framework. In legal terms, this is a significant reference point — it ties Meta's compliance obligations to recognized international standards rather than self-defined benchmarks.

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What the New Facebook Instagram Time Limits Actually Say

This is where things get interesting, and where the gap between the headline and the fine print becomes most visible.

What the settlement requires by default for teen accounts:

  • A two-hour daily usage limit across Facebook and Instagram
  • Chronological, non-personalized feeds available as the default option within four months of the agreement
  • Hidden like and reaction counts by default for users aged 13–17
  • Blocking of most features overnight
  • Silencing of most notifications during school hours
  • Disabling of AR filters that simulate cosmetic surgical procedures on faces

These are real changes. Hiding like counts is a meaningful design shift. Disabling surgery-mimicking filters removes a category of content researchers have tied to body image harm in adolescents. And defaulting teens to chronological feeds directly undermines the algorithmic amplification that drives engagement — and, critics argue, drives harm.

But the limits have carve-outs.

Parents can override the two-hour cap entirely. Messaging does not count toward the two-hour limit and remains available overnight. Video content that runs at least 22 minutes is also exempt from the cap. Given that Facebook and Instagram have both pushed heavily into long-form video — directly competing with YouTube — that exemption is not a small thing. California AG Settlement Document

Then there is Phase II.

Phase II of the agreement would tighten restrictions further — dropping the daily limit to 60 minutes per app, or 120 minutes total, and expanding night mode from the current window to 10 p.m.–7 a.m. But Phase II only activates under a condition the settlement calls "Industry-Wide Adoption."

That means Snap, TikTok, YouTube, and any future large entrants must be under substantively equivalent time-management and age-assurance requirements and subject to their own independent audits before Meta is obligated to implement the stricter rules. California AG Settlement Document

In plain English: Meta's toughest commitments only kick in if its biggest competitors are also forced to comply.

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The Real Numbers Behind the $18 Billion Settlement

The headline figure requires some unpacking, because the actual payment structure is more precise — and more instructive — than the round number suggests.

The guaranteed portion:

Meta is committed to paying $1,165,662,174.56 per year in what the agreement calls "Guaranteed Installment Payments." This is the locked-in amount that flows to states regardless of what TikTok, YouTube, or anyone else does.

The contingent portion:

An additional $502,402,600.77 per year in "Contingency Installment Payments" only flows if rivals adopt comparable obligations. Over ten years, the maximum total payout to states is $16,680,647,753.21.

State-level breakdown example:

California, which led the litigation, is set to receive $153,594,791.69 per guaranteed installment and $66,199,645.57 per contingency installment — for a maximum state share of $2,197,944,372.61 over the term.

The Cambridge Analytica layer:

On top of all of this, the agreement separately resolves older Cambridge Analytica complaints through a $459,293,017.80 Cambridge Settlement Amount. California AG Settlement Document

Putting it in perspective:

In the second quarter of 2026 alone, Meta posted $16 billion in profit. Its 2025 annual profit exceeded $60 billion. The guaranteed annual settlement payment of roughly $1.17 billion is almost exactly what Meta's Reality Labs division loses every 24 days — a comparison that one of its former engineering directors noted publicly on X. Business Insider

Market analysts and legal observers at Reuters and CNBC have broadly described the deal as a "financial nuisance" rather than any kind of existential threat. The guaranteed annual bill is well below 2% of Meta's recent profits. Reuters

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TikTok YouTube Age Verification and the Competitive Pressure Play

This is the most strategically sophisticated element of the entire settlement — and the part that earned Meta a "win" label from at least one industry analyst despite the multi-billion-dollar price tag.

By structuring roughly 30% of the total payment (over $5 billion) as contingent on Industry-Wide Adoption, Meta has effectively turned its own legal liability into a weapon aimed at TikTok, YouTube, and Snap.

The mechanism works like this: if those platforms do not adopt comparable restrictions — including equivalent age verification and time-management frameworks subject to independent audits — Meta never has to pay its toughest installments and never has to activate its most restrictive teen features. But if they do comply, it levels the competitive playing field. Either way, Meta comes out ahead relative to its rivals.

Meta ran full-page newspaper advertisements the day after the settlement was announced, calling on YouTube and TikTok to join the company "in supporting teens." This is corporate public relations executing a legal strategy. Meta Newsroom

What this means for TikTok and YouTube specifically:

Both platforms now face a choice with no clean exit. If they resist, they hand Meta a PR advantage and may invite their own state-level litigation. If they comply, they absorb the same compliance costs — independent audits, age verification systems, design changes — that Meta has already priced into a decade-long payment plan. And Meta, having negotiated the framework, knows the terrain better than anyone.

Snap is in a similar position. All three companies would need to build or license age verification systems, change algorithmic feed designs, and submit to external audits. That is expensive and disruptive, particularly for platforms that do not have Meta's scale or legal war chest.

The TikTok situation carries additional complexity. The platform has faced separate U.S. legislative pressure over its Chinese ownership structure and national security concerns. Layering a teen safety compliance framework on top of those existing pressures creates a compounding regulatory burden. Reuters

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Even supporters of stronger teen protections are raising alarms about one critical piece of the settlement's foundation: the age verification and age assurance technology it depends on.

The agreement requires Meta to deploy an age assurance framework using either third-party or proprietary methods. The error thresholds are specific:

  • No more than 10% misclassification rate for users aged 16–17
  • No more than 3–5% misclassification rate for users aged 13–15, depending on the method and timeline used

Meta must also develop a dedicated "U13 Age Model" with enforcement volume targets that will be audited annually. California AG Settlement Document

The problem is that existing age estimation technology — including face-based estimation models — is known to underperform on exactly these age ranges. Adolescent faces are among the hardest categories for machine learning models to classify accurately. Lighting conditions, image quality, makeup, and demographic variation all introduce significant error rates.

TechCrunch reported that the agreement's reliance on face-based estimation and soft-matching models carries serious risks of misclassification, circumvention, and demographic bias. A 14-year-old who submits a slightly older-looking photo, or uses a parent's device, or accesses the platform through a browser rather than an app, can likely sidestep the system. TechCrunch

Privacy advocates add another concern: the collection and processing of facial or biometric data from millions of teenagers to verify their ages creates its own significant data security and privacy exposure. The cure may introduce new risks alongside the existing ones.

The Australian parallel:

Last year, Australia implemented an outright ban on social media for children under 16 — the most aggressive teen online protection policy enacted by any democratic government. The results were instructive and discouraging. Usage fell initially, then climbed back toward pre-ban levels as teenagers found workarounds. By July of this year, 26% of Australian 13 to 15-year-olds were back on TikTok. Business Insider

If a hard ban with government enforcement behind it could not keep teenagers off these platforms, a two-hour timer with a messaging carve-out and a parental override option faces an even steeper climb.

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The Independent Audit Regime and What It Changes

One element of the settlement that has received less attention than it deserves is the independent audit structure built into the agreement.

An independent auditor — selected jointly by Meta and a bipartisan State Committee — will conduct at least five annual audit cycles over the first five years. The auditor will have broad access to Meta's non-privileged internal data, models, and documentation related to:

  • Age assurance systems and their performance
  • Time management implementation and effectiveness
  • Teen content safety protocols
  • Harmful-experience controls and algorithmic systems

California AG Settlement Document

This is genuinely new territory. Previous regulatory actions against Meta — including the 2019 FTC settlement and the COPPA-related fines — did not give external parties this level of access to internal systems. An auditor with the right mandate and the right expertise could surface meaningful non-compliance.

The limitation is that audit regimes are only as strong as the standards they enforce. If the underlying age verification technology consistently fails to hit its misclassification targets, what happens? The agreement specifies that Meta must develop and refine its systems over time, but the enforcement mechanism for persistent technical failure is not as clear as the payment structure.

Critics, including privacy technologists, point out that this shifts a significant enforcement burden onto a technical system that is not yet reliable — and layers accountability onto auditors who may lack the deep platform-specific expertise to catch sophisticated gaming of the metrics.

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What the Settlement Did Not Change

To understand the full picture, it helps to list what the settlement explicitly left untouched.

Algorithmic ranking itself. The core recommendation engine — the system that decides which posts, videos, and accounts to show a teen next — is not mandated to change beyond the default chronological feed option. Teens who opt out of the chronological default, or whose parents override it, will still be served algorithmically ranked content.

Advertising targeting for teens. The settlement does not prohibit behavioral advertising to users aged 13–17. Engagement-based ad targeting, which relies on precisely the same usage signals that drove the addiction allegations, remains a viable revenue stream.

The fundamental engagement loop. Notifications, streaks, follower counts, and the social validation mechanics that researchers have most closely tied to compulsive use are largely intact. The cosmetic filter ban and the hidden like count are meaningful but partial measures.

Zuckerberg's personal accountability. The CEO did not testify. There is no admission of wrongdoing embedded in the settlement agreement. The legal record, as it stands, reflects a financial resolution rather than a factual finding against Meta's executives.

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10 Frequently Asked Questions About Meta's Teen Safety Settlement

1. What is the Meta teen safety settlement, and who is involved?

The Meta teen safety settlement is a legal agreement between Meta Platforms and 48 U.S. states and territories, resolving claims that Facebook and Instagram were designed to addict teenagers. The case was filed in the Northern District of California before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers and is formally part of MDL No. 3047, In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation. Florida is the notable state that refused to join and continues to litigate independently.

2. How much will Meta actually pay, and over what period?

Meta will pay a maximum of $16,680,647,753.21 to states over ten years. Of this, roughly 70% — about $1.17 billion per year — is guaranteed regardless of what rival platforms do. The remaining approximately 30%, around $502 million per year, is contingent on TikTok, YouTube, Snap, and similar platforms adopting comparable obligations. A separate Cambridge Analytica settlement of $459,293,017.80 is also folded into the deal.

3. What are the new rules Meta must follow for teen accounts?

Meta must default teen accounts to a two-hour daily usage limit, offer chronological non-personalized feeds as the default option within four months, hide like and reaction counts by default, block most features overnight, silence most notifications during school hours, and disable AR filters that mimic cosmetic surgical procedures. Messaging is exempt from the time cap and remains available overnight.

4. What is Phase II of the settlement, and when does it activate?

Phase II would tighten the daily limit to 60 minutes per app (120 minutes total) and extend night mode to 10 p.m.–7 a.m. However, Phase II only activates if there is "Industry-Wide Adoption" — meaning Snap, TikTok, YouTube, and major new entrants are under substantively equivalent time-management and age-assurance requirements and subject to independent audits.

5. Why do some analysts call this a win for Meta?

Because the annual guaranteed payment is less than 2% of Meta's recent annual profits and comparable to what its Reality Labs division loses every 24 days. More strategically, by making roughly $5 billion and its strictest obligations contingent on rivals complying, Meta has converted a legal liability into leverage over TikTok, YouTube, and Snap — forcing them to either absorb similar compliance costs or face a PR disadvantage.

6. What age verification technology must Meta deploy?

Meta must implement an age assurance framework — using third-party or proprietary methods — that achieves specific false-positive thresholds: no more than 10% misclassification for users aged 16–17, and no more than 3–5% misclassification for users aged 13–15 depending on the method. Meta must also build a dedicated Under-13 Age Model with annual enforcement volume targets. The framework must align with ISO 27566 or equivalent age-assurance standards.

7. How reliable is current age verification technology?

Not very, for the age ranges that matter most here. Face-based estimation models and soft-matching systems are known to struggle with adolescent faces, which are harder to classify accurately than adult faces. Misclassification risks are compounded by lighting, device quality, makeup, and demographic variation. TechCrunch and privacy technologists have warned that the systems are circumventable and may introduce demographic bias.

8. Who will audit Meta's compliance with the settlement?

An independent auditor, jointly selected by Meta and a bipartisan State Committee, will conduct at least five annual audit cycles over the first five years. The auditor will have broad access to Meta's non-privileged data, models, and internal documentation related to age assurance, time management, teen content safety, and harmful-experience controls.

9. What happened with Australia's social media ban for teens, and what does it tell us?

Australia banned children under 16 from social media outright last year — the most aggressive teen protection policy enacted by a democratic government. Usage dropped initially but climbed back toward pre-ban levels as teenagers found workarounds. By July 2026, 26% of Australian 13 to 15-year-olds were back on TikTok. The Australian experience suggests that restrictions without robust technical enforcement and without demand-side change tend to erode over time.

10. What did the settlement not change about how Meta operates?

The settlement left Meta's core algorithmic ranking engine largely intact. Behavioral advertising targeting teenagers remains permitted. The fundamental engagement loop — including notifications, streaks, follower counts, and social validation mechanics — is largely untouched. There was no admission of wrongdoing by Meta or its executives, and Mark Zuckerberg never testified during the eight-day trial.

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Sources: Reuters | California AG Settlement Document | Meta Newsroom | TechCrunch | CNN | Business Insider

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Episode transcript

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Craig: meta just agreed to one of the largest state settlements in big tech history, but the most important number may not be $18,000,000,000. meta tied roughly 5,000,000,000 and its toughest teen restrictions to whether tiktok, youtube, and snapchat play by similar rules. meta resolved sweeping state claims that facebook and instagram were designed to keep young users engaged while exposing them to harm. it just introduced a cumulative two hour limit, overnight blocks, school hour notification controls, hidden, light counts, enhanced age assurance, and independent auditing. but around the $5,000,000,000 mark and stricter one hour per app limits depending on rival platforms adopting comparable rules, making this both a child safety settlement and a strategic pressure campaign. what remains unclear is whether age assurance will work reliably, whether families will override the controls, and whether the restrictions will reduce harm rather than simply moving teen attention elsewhere. what do you think about this, john?

Jon: yeah. well, this is hilarious because didn't we just... was it, so we're recording this on september 1, but didn't we just record, last week that they're being sued for 200,000,000,000 and they settled for 18,000,000,000? so that was very quick. so let's talk about this. meta came out ahead. they won in this one. is the company, essentially, doesn't have to write an $18,000,000,000 check tomorrow. okay? most payments are spread across a decade, ten years. and approximately 5,300,000,000 of that, 30% of the total, is conditional. meta only owes that portion if youtube and tiktok adopt specified protections and make comparable payments. so meanwhile, meta avoided the possibility of a jury imposing vastly larger damages, stopped a trial that was beginning to expose embarrassing internal evidence, avoided zuckerberg's expected testimony, and did not have to abandon the fundamental advertising and engaging business model underlying instagram and facebook. and so this... the most simplest way to summarize this article, and i don't... we're not ending this, but meta paid a gigantic amount of money, but in exchange, it bought certainty. and for a company that generated 201,000,000,000 in revenue in 2025, that that... what they did just saved them. and they really don't have to give up much. so, like, this is crazy because the trial essentially began in oakland on august 18, and we're now september 1. like, it's baffling. what are your thoughts on this, craig?

Craig: yeah. i... it's interesting to see what happened. i, meta reduced uncertainty by turning this potential enormous trial of 200,000,000,000 plus into a predictable 10 obligation. so now it's just an expense they pay over a year, and there's some continued structure that gives the attorney general an incentive to pursue comparable settlements. so i think, instead of dragging out this for years, they kinda came to him and said, look. this is what we wanna do. we wanna give you, the ammunition you need to go after all the other competition to force them to do the same thing. and in turn, we'll agree to these things, but we're not gonna pay what you want us to pay. we're only gonna pay this.

Jon: i disagree. i think they did this because this creates a huge discovery risk. there's internal emails, presentations, research documents, communications between executives. all that can become evidence. executives can be questioned under oath. former employees can explain how decisions were actually made. i think yeah.

Craig: i guess my point is not that, what you're saying. i agree with a 100% that this is way in facebook's interest because they're not giving this up. i thinking the state agreed to the low amount because it allowed them to move forward with everyone else is all i'm saying. is that that... because they yeah. yes. facebook came to them and said, listen. we'll we'll meet you halfway on this. we'll create a structure. we'll work with you, create this thing that you can now take and implement with everyone else and sue them to get all of us in line, and we'll work with you on that. but this is what we're gonna pay, and we wanna end this lawsuit now, and and we'll settle it now rather than fighting you for ten years.

Jon: but in the grand scheme of things, wouldn't it be a better interest to get an actual ruling than to settle with meta? like, as far as the strength to go after other companies, yes, it can be drained out for years. but the strength of that ruling compared to what they're getting now, which is not much.

Craig: maybe. like, i... this has been going on for a while. like, it... this started with 1998 with, coppa established protections around collecting personal information for children. 2018 cambridge analytica becomes a defining meta privacy scandal. in 2019, they paid a record 5,000,000,000 to the ftc on that privacy when they, you know, released too much or they were hacked. 2023, a bipartisan coalition files federal claims alleging, meta harmed users improperly. 2024, meta launches teen accounts with automatic protections. in august 2026, california federal trial begins. so this has been going on, like, overall historically for a while, but you're right. it started august 18. by august 26, a settlement was announced. so yeah. what was that? you know? eight days?

Jon: it's... i think i think it was complete bs. but let's talk about what actually changes for teenagers. so the settlement... i'll i'll... the one positive thing is the settlement creates a surprisingly detailed regulatory framework, which... okay. great. they can start using now. but still, you don't get that verdict, which they were gonna get for sure. but... so there's a default two hour daily usage limit. there's a midnight to 6am block. there's school mode. there's repeated usage warnings. lights are hidden. there's restrictions on appearance filters. there's stronger age assurance and more parental controls, which they had all of these in place. they had all of these in place or ready to go. they just didn't implement them from what i get. that's hearsay, though.

Craig: and i i hear what you're saying, and i don't know why california would have settled. i don't know. and, i mean, i don't... maybe they figured this was the easiest road ahead. maybe they didn't really have a great suit. maybe maybe maybe maybe. i don't know. but this really gives a leg up when they... you know, eu suing them for very similar things so they can just come up and say this is, you know, the strategy and agreement and whatever we came with the us can't... we should just apply this here. these rules, these things. and they'll come up with some sort of way. i think it's a quick win, specifically for meta because they get to set, precedent for negotiating with every other country that's got the same problem.

Jon: yeah. but i i don't think eu is gonna care about precedent. i think eu is gonna go... i... based on what the eu has done so far, i think they have, bigger teeth, and they're not gonna give up. but the one thing that i don't think they're gonna give up as easily as the us. the one thing

Craig: well, i guess that... what do you mean by that? like... and i say when you say give up, like, what is a win and what isn't aware?

Jon: i feel like they... this, by settling with meta, i think that... i feel like they gave up. i feel like they gave in.

Craig: so the thing with that is it... that implies that money was the, what they wanted. that money goes to the state of every

Jon: the verdict is what's important here, is what i'm saying.

Craig: it, or is it the fact that we put controls around steam... teen harm and that we, you know, start phasing this stuff in? that's why i sit back and say, what is it that was truly wanted?

Jon: no. i think... well, what they wanted was to protect children, and they've got... they now have a settlement that has less teeth than a verdict would. like, it's gonna instill less change, less strong change than a verdict actually would have, if it had gone to trial. that's my opinion, though.

Craig: and that's possible. like, i don't know what they were expecting if they've gone to trial. like, the money thing, i'm not too worried about because 200,000,000,000 was probably a ridiculous amount.

Jon: do you wanna know why i say that, though, craig, that they gave up? because there's a giant loophole here that survived all of this, and it's the algorithm. so this settlement doesn't abolish the algorithmic recommendation systems for teenagers. so teenagers can opt for a non personalized feed, but personalization isn't category... categorically eliminated. and so it matters because the recommendation engine sits at the center of the social media business. and so the algorithm determines what you see, in what order, what it predicts will hold your attention, and, ultimately, how much advertising meta can show you. so if regulators had required meta to completely eliminate engagement optimized recommendation systems for minors, that could have represented a far more fundamental attack on its business model, but they didn't. and so that's the most important thing that did... that meta didn't have to give up. and that's why i say they gave up. you're on mute, i think.

Craig: i mean, i wasn't close enough to the trial to figure out, you know, what was the true motivation around this and whether, this is fair or not. this is... says this is a significant enforceable package of defaults, reporting obligations, and outside over... oversight. it's not a ban on an addictive design, personalized advertising, or, like you said, algorithmic feeds. and its success depends on age detection and enforcement and actual behavior outcomes. so the one thing that did come out of this is they, they kind of fixed that catch 22 that used to say, well, wait a minute. you... the technical and legal paradox platforms needed information to detect children, but collecting detailed information from an 13 child without parental consent may itself create the liability. so the ftc has offered a partial enforcement safe harbor for information collected solely for age verification, but states, retain, the enforcement authority, in their own state. so i think that is probably, a success because at least from point of view, we have to figure out how we do this thing.

Jon: yeah.

Craig: so if we have to verify it, but we're not allowed to collect the information we need to verify, how do we do this? i mean, i... this has been ongoing for a long time, and i... we encourage this kind of staff. we encourage facebook and google and whatnot to know who we are and feed us information from our own echo chamber and ecosystem and all that stuff. and now we're down a road where it has our attention. everything we watch agrees with us. and, you know, when we see someone who doesn't agree with us as a society, we get upset because we're in... we don't see that all the time because we're force fed this stuff, and it's not good. and we're starting to see that maybe, you know, all our interactions through a screen with all these, endorphin things aren't good at all from... for children or for adults. so it'd be good to see where we're going next, but, you know, i feel this is like the cat is already out of the bag from, just like your ai argument. kids already use this stuff. kids are smarter than their parents for these tools. are they just gonna get around this stuff anyway? and

Jon: they will. that's why that's why i said this settlement has no teeth. that's why the verdict would have been better. that's that's why i say that because i think, in my opinion, again... and i'm not a lawyer. but the verdict would have hit meta harder, and there would have been better systems in place than what we got out of this settlement.

Craig: but yeah. so this settlement creates defaults and oversight, and it leaves meta's core engagement business largely intact and may strengthen meta against less resourced rivals. the real test is not whether meta can build a timer. it is whether regulation can change incentives in an industry built around the attention economy. should the one hour rule apply to every major platform, or should parents decide app by app? let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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